


The Long, Lonely Years

by KLStarre



Category: Not Another D&D Podcast (Podcast)
Genre: Angst with a Happy Ending, Families of Choice, Gen, Not Canon Compliant, Post-Canon
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-03-02
Updated: 2020-03-02
Packaged: 2021-02-28 00:35:14
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,576
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/22984885
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/KLStarre/pseuds/KLStarre
Summary: After they win against Thiala, Moonshine takes up the crown of Hell.
Relationships: Moonshine Cybin & Hardwon Surefoot & Beverly Toegold V
Comments: 12
Kudos: 95





	The Long, Lonely Years

**Author's Note:**

> Thank you to Hannah strawberry_sky for helping me figure out how to make this work!

The first thing Moonshine Cybin does after she takes the Hellfire crown, gently, from Pendeghast the Betrayer and places it, gently, atop her own head, is close the One Hells. The crown burns in a more-than-literal sense, the evil of it biting deep into her mind and her bones and her network. It will be harder than she thought, she realizes. Pendeghast had done even more than she’d given him credit for. But closing Hell is easy, once she has the crown, just a snap of her fingers and a moment of concentration, and the world is sealed. She feels the separation from all the spores she’s left behind like a part of her heart is being torn out of her body, and she doubles over with a cough, arms wrapped around her abdomen.

This was the right thing to do. She knows it was the right thing to do. But. _Shit_.

“You alright, Moonshine?” Pendeghast – she at least owes him the use of his name, at this point – asks. Her vision is too blurred to see his expression, but she’s lucid enough to wave a hand at him and Banish him, easy, back to the Material Plane. He’s there, and then he’s not. He deserves a chance, not to be stuck here. Everyone deserves a chance.

The pain ebbs and Moonshine is able to stand up again, to look at the throne. It looks bigger than it did the last time she was here. More imposing. The throne of Hell is not meant to sit empty, and the crown pulls her toward it, a child begging to be brought home. Moonshine takes three whole steps forward before she realizes that she’s moved. She nods to herself, takes one more glance at the throne of Hell’s faintly flickering flames, and sits down.

The ground is hard, of course, and hot, and the cloak she’s worn since she’d first made her father proud slowly begins to melt into it, flames crawling up its fabric. She closes her eyes. She’d thought the crown would feel like the Thinking Cap. She’d thought that once she put it on without being taken over that it would be hers, and she would be okay, and she could find some way to bend its power to her will and she could solve the problem on her own without bothering anyone and then, she didn’t know. Go home, maybe. She’d thought that maybe she would get to go home.

There’s a ringing in her ears and sulfur in her nose and a red throbbing behind her eyes. The weight of her cloak is gone from around her shoulders, and she’s too afraid to look and see the ashes. Thank Melora she’s here. Unbidden, her thoughts flash to Bev, and to Hardwon, and to Alanis, and to Pendeghast, and she thinks of them sitting here, wearing this crown, and she knows she did the right thing. She is here so that no one else has to be. She is here so that everyone else can have the chance they deserve.

Eventually, curled up on a pile of ash, the aura of the crown preventing her from burning up, Moonshine trances.

In the morning, she makes herself a Heroes’ Feast. She almost saves the leftovers in Tupperware, but they’ll be useless by the time she needs them, and so she waves her hand and they disappear, instead. She eats the Feast alone. She would have offered to share with a devil or an imp or a wandering soul, but there’s no one left here, all Banished to the far beyond as soon as she’d done what she’d done. The only souls left in Hell are those of the living.

When she’s done with her sticky buns, Moonshine tells herself that the pain abates. “It’s gonna be okay,” she says, out loud, to herself, and her voice echoes out across the empty planes. Monster trucks and twisted metal lie scattered as far as she can see, the throne looming up in the middle of them, taunting her.

She reaches into her bag, the only thing she’s brought with her, and pulls out Ulfgar Goes Punch. She reads it out loud, still not quite fluent, but measured, practiced. And then she reads it out loud again. And again. And again. The voice of the Crick fills Hell until her throat is sore, and then Moonshine trances, again. She would sleep, if she weren’t afraid that she’d lose control of the crown. Anything to fill the time. 

In the morning, she makes herself a Heroes’ Feast.

∞

It takes Moonshine five years to sit in the throne. She’s different, now. Older, wiser, lonelier, sadder. She figures, if she was going to be corrupted, it would have happened already. There’s nothing particular that prompts her to finally do it. Just, one morning, she awakens from her trance, she makes herself her Heroes’ Feast, and the throne is there, like it always is. It can’t _hurt_ , is the thing. Even if she loses herself, she’s stuck here, anyway. Hell was easy to close, but there doesn’t seem to be an option to reopen it. Not that she would. Of course. She’d done the right thing. But she’d be lying if she said she hadn’t checked.

Moonshine ascends the steps to the throne of Hell and barely feels its heat as she gets closer. It’s made of wrought iron, twisted into shapes that seem to move as she looks at them, screaming faces illuminated by flames and ancient words hidden by shadows. If she’s going to be here forever, she might as well accept it. The pain of the crown is blinding, as always, and Moonshine ignores it, as always.

She takes a seat on the throne of Hell, and it welcomes her, adjusts its shape to fit her form. The pain lessens, just a little bit, and she leans back into the fire that makes up the back of the throne. The arms mold themselves as she moves and, for the first time since killing Thiala, Moonshine begins to feel herself relax. She is in control.

∞

It takes Moonshine fifteen years to notice she’s forgotten the name of her first kiss. She doesn’t even know what brought the thought into her mind, but she’s talking out loud to herself, making the jokes she started making when she’d thrown Ulfgar Goes Punch into the flames in a fit of anger, and suddenly she stops, silent, voice hanging in the air. She doesn’t remember. She leans forward, tapping her fingers on her throne’s armrests, and tries to think.

She’s so tired, and the pain hasn’t stopped wrenching its way through her, wrapping around her bones and squeezing them until they feel like the dust of her cape that remains on the ground. And it was a long time ago, now, her first kiss. And not like it mattered. And and and. There are all sorts of excuses not to remember, but the fact of the matter is she had known it, and now she doesn’t. Fifteen years is a long time to spend alone, she thinks, for the first time.

The whole time she’s been here, she’s been thinking about eternity, and how long eternity is. But fifteen years, the time she’s already done, somehow feels longer when she allows herself to linger on it. The time that has already passed is real, and she can feel the effects of it on her mind, her body, her magic. The time that has yet to pass is ephemeral. Fifteen years. How much more will she forget?

That night, she sleeps.

∞

It takes thirty years for Moonshine to stop talking out loud. Hell hasn’t magically repopulated. Nothing grows here, or will ever grow here. A rush of anger runs through her at her own stupidity, and midsentence, recounting to herself the story of Balnor shitting into space at the Nightcap in the Fey Wild, she shuts up. No one is _listening_. Balnor is dead, and no one is listening to her remember him as he was, and no one ever _will_. No one will listen to her talk about how Balnor had gotten swallowed by a giant snake trying to save a world he didn’t even belong to, or how Tonathan had shared his comics with them, or how Apple had given her her jersey, or how Deadeye had gotten to go home, or how Mavrus had quit his job to come fight the tarrasque or how Bev had gotten his Self Defense Patch for a brutal decapitation or how Hardwon had ordered a cup of infinite meat in the Bear Prince’s hot tub. It doesn’t fucking matter anymore.

It’s been thirty years, they’ve all moved on. It’s been thirty years and she has eternity yawning ahead of her and she’s left everyone she ever loved behind and so she needs to stop hanging _onto_ them already and she needs to stop talking to an empty world and she needs to get over it and let go and yes she was raised in the Crick and she doesn’t know how to be alone but she needs to learn or she’ll drive herself insane. She needs to shut up and get over it and learn to be alone.

Pendeghast had said you got used to it after a while. She wishes she had asked him to be more specific.

∞

Moonshine has lost track of time. Every morning, she makes herself a Heroes’ Feast, but she only faintly remembers why. It takes most of her energy to remain sitting upright on the throne she has chosen. The rest of it is occupied with keeping the crown under control, a constant struggle. It hadn’t used to take all of her focus, but it’s gotten stronger. Or maybe she’s gotten weaker. It doesn’t much matter, either way.

Today is a good day, though. Right after she clears away the Heroes’ Feast, she has just enough magic left to whisper a couple spores into existence, and press them into the base of her throne. Probably, they won’t grow. But she remembers that, once, she had wanted to collect the spores of the world and leave hers behind. It’s one of the last threads of herself she has to cling to, and it can’t hurt to try again. Probably, they won’t grow.

The next day is worse than usual, and she spends it with her eyes closed, leaning her head back, trying to let her throne take the weight of the crown. It pushes her down nonetheless, and she slumps, not making a noise. If she opens her eyes, she knows what she’ll see – houses burning, people screaming, familiar faces to which she can’t pin a name begging her for help. So, she doesn’t.

Days later, when she is once again strong enough to remember that her name is Moonshine Cybin, daughter of the Crick and of the water, Queen of the Elves, she awakens to see that her mushrooms have grown and multiplied, spreading up the arms of her throne. Something is _growing_ in Hell. The idea of it almost helps when, another few days later, she is too weak to make her Heroes’ Feast and she loses control and blacks out and wakes up to see that she’s scorched her quickly growing garden into oblivion.

 _Almost_ helps. She gets it back together, makes her Feast, forces the crown back into submission. But she doesn’t make any more mushrooms. She can’t face the possibility of having to watch them die.

∞

Hell is silent, like it always is. Moonshine is on her throne, like she always is. She’s curled up in pain, something that is getting increasingly more common, and she’s keeping her hands pressed under her to fight the urge to remove the crown. Her eyes are closed, because sometimes when she closes her eyes, she can still picture a hazy vision of the Crick before everything went bad. She can’t, right now, but the possibility is there, taunting her.

“Moonshine?” she hears, and the voice is familiar, but she can’t place it. It can’t be real, anyway. Sometimes she hears things. She’s the only thing here with a voice, and she hasn’t spoken in a long, long time.

“Moonshine?” again, a different voice, equally familiar.

She opens her eyes, and through a haze, sees two men below her, twenty or thirty feet away from the base of her throne. She can’t make out their faces. She blinks, shakes her head, focuses very intently on her right knee, and then her left, and then her shoulders, one at a time. Her vision clears, slightly.

In front of her is a half-elf, hair just beginning to gray, a hammer slung across his back and a beard thicker than anyone of elven descent should be able to grow. And beside him is a halfling, in full plate armor, sword sheathed, helmet green. An adult, in his prime, laugh lines just beginning to show. She knows them. She _knows_ them. They look scared and sad and completely different from when she had left them behind, but she _knows them_.

“Hardwon,” she whispers, voice raspy from disuse. “Bev.”

Bev looks like he’s going to cry, and Hardwon reaches for the handle of his hammer in the instinctual motion she’d used to know so well. “Yeah,” he says.

“How?”

Bev laughs, and it sounds different than it used to. Probably everything he does will sound different than it used to. Her Green Teen Bev, all grown up.

“You thought closing Hell would stop us?” Hardwon asks. “It’s like you don’t even know us.”

“It was harder without you. It took a long time.” Bev pipes in, and, yeah, he does sound different, voice completely settled but probably just as beautiful for singing as ever. “But we’re here.”

Moonshine doesn’t even realize she’s stood up before she’s running to them, throwing herself into their arms, cradling Bev’s head against her and burying hers in Hardwon’s chest. They’re both so…sturdy, so much sturdier than she’s been in decades, and she leans against them, lets them take her weight.

“Let’s go home,” says Hardwon eventually, and it all hits again at once, the weight of her responsibility.

“I can’t.”

“Hell’s closed, leave the crown here.”

“I – I can’t.” She doesn’t know why. But telling herself she’s doing what she has to do is the only thing that’s gotten her through the long, lonely years, and she doesn’t know how to give it up.

“Moonshine, _please_.” She looks down at Bev. He’s all grown up, but she’ll always be able to look down at him. He’ll always be the stupid kid who got thrown off a tower and the warrior who’d killed Death for her and the scout who’d never earned his Cooking patch. And she looks back at Hardwon who, close up, is starting to get wrinkles in the place where he furrows his brow when he’s trying to understand one of her plans. His muscles are as strong as ever, but she can feel him shaking.

She nods. It’s all she’s capable of doing. Hardwon knocks the crown from her head, letting it burn his hand to the bone. The crown of Hell falls from Moonshine’s head and rolls away, spinning on itself once, twice, three times, before falling to a stop. The three of them watch it, for a minute.

And then they go home.

**Works inspired by this one:**

  * [[Podfic] The Long, Lonely Years](https://archiveofourown.org/works/27646817) by [ofjustimagine](https://archiveofourown.org/users/ofjustimagine/pseuds/ofjustimagine)




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